


Cling to Me, as I Do You

by goldenslumber



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenslumber/pseuds/goldenslumber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The voices could be heard rising up against the stars, as the sea swells to the call of the moon. Sharper and surer than the cold winds which swept the lands in those harsh days. A song, of chants, of men and women, of boys and girls, overtired, mournful, bidden for hope." Short, shippy, and shiver-worthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cling to Me, as I Do You

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "Dead in the Water" by Ellie Goulding.

The voices could be heard rising up against the stars, as the sea swells to the call of the moon. Sharper and surer than the cold winds which swept the lands in those harsh days. A song, of chants, of men and women, of boys and girls, overtired, mournful, bidden for hope.  
  
From her post, refusing to shiver, to show weakness of any sort, Brienne could hear them. These chants were different than the usual religious worships that could be heard from around the Light Lord's fires or echoing out of a hastily-made sept. Haunting, the voices poured into the night, and filled it, for once, full of something human. Something not horrendous and terrifying and  _other._  A rise and fall of octaves, at intervals of three. Crackling and sobbing words, wracked and ravished by shaking chests that breathe and move, that feel the numbing cold.  
  
Mere three short lengths away Jaime stood at his own post, rod-straight, staring ahead. Another man three paces next to him, then a woman leaning heavily into her spear for support just three more on, and two boys just shy of beards beyond even her, and more so, for miles. On and on, the people go, unlikely lords and commoners, anyone old enough, strong enough, alive enough, to be there.  
  
The song washed over them as salt for their wounds:  
  
 _ **There they go,**_  
  
 _There they go.. there they go.. there they go,_  Brienne heard the echo in her head. Far and farther she saw, over snow glimmering in moonlight, toward horizons unending, where shadows cast longer than anyone's reach, hiding unimaginable things beyond the touch and knowledge of man.  _There they go,_  she thinks, tasting the death, the darkness of the long night.  _There they go, the good days gone. There they go, our sisters and brothers._  
  
 _ **There they go,  
On a march of death,**_  
  
 _Deeper and deeper into the earth, down, down, down into seven layers of hell and then to the ones further on than that._  Brienne conjured the sights of the Others, there in her mind, strung together by seething winds, by the cold that can grip a man's skin as dragon's teeth. Below her post, figures danced in the darkness, pitch in motion, incarnations of what is already lost, following what is completely Other.  
  
“There they go,  
On a march of death, farewell...” murmured the old knight on Brienne's left.  
  
His breath was mist in the open. It evaporated the moment it was issued. The words lingered, floated there in the open, taunted near every living soul present. Brienne felt the whole line, everyone in their posts, hear this man's echo and shift, as it sunk into skin, through bone, to bite into veins of blood long frozen over.  
  
Jaime coughed, then winced at the sting of his chain mail against his neck.  
  
Brienne could not remember the last time she had heard him speak. (This hurt, and concerned her, because she reflected to herself she liked hearing him speak – there were few things to like in the dark of the times and to not have what was in reach sent panic through her.) Perhaps that day she had heard him utter something or another. One soft wench to grasp and cling to throughout the precious few hours of sunlight which was gifted. Then again, they would have been busy, would have been looking up from their place among hundreds, waiting to know exactly where they would stand the next night through.  _Even cripples are worth something, now,_  he would joke as they wrote him down a spot. She smiled for it, thinly, if only because the alternative would be to face the layers of self-doubt hidden there, to dive head first into a dark stained pool of insecurities, about a fumbling left-hand, of a stump that  _is missing,_  that  _was taken,_  that still pains him, even though it is not there. Brienne wasn't ready to search the deep, dark pits within Jaime, when she felt her own cracks crawling over her composure. Fissures of stunted and raw wounds, half-stanched, still hemorrhaging, of a face ripped savagely open and scarred over, no worse than her heart.  
  
 _ **There they go,**_  
  
“In a row,  
Hung with mangled hearts and souls,” sung the voices, echoed the knight, heard the living.  
  
Brienne clung to the hilt of her sword, praying for balance.  
  
“Through the field,  
Where the corpses fall and die.”  
  
 ** _Die._**  
  
 _Where they die,_  when they rise again. Lady Stoneheart materialized before Brienne whenever she closed her eyes. Haunted her dreams sometimes, still, when the new death and loss could not possibly be enough. Hyle. Podrick. Renly. Ghosts that shall be corpses in a field somewhere, forever. Rotted to dust, crumbled by the wind and rain, pulled deep into the grasses,  _down, down, down._  She almost can not remember the color of mud, of soil that promises growth and food and prosperity, of green, orange.. nothing but black and white existed in the night; the black within the clothing, the white in the skin of the dead. Milky snow and moon and stars, lost among a canvas of black earth and limitless sky.  
  
But Jaime reminded her. Helped her recall the green within his eyes, the sun within his golden locks and beard, and a shadow of what life could be within his smile. Brienne clung to that, as she clung to her sword. As the people clung to their songs, to the sound of human voices, that comforted them and told them they were not alone in the dark, at their posts, in their despair.  
  
“There they go,”  
 _ **There they go, there they go,**_  
“All the boys and horses, too.”  
  
“Hear the call,”  
 ** _Hear the call, hear the call,_**  
“Of the woman's mournful cry.”  
  
More of them sang, then. The old knight's voice was hacked and broken. It made Brienne think of herself, of slumping against the ground and curling up and forgetting everything. To let tears touch her cheeks, warmer and more reliving than any comfort another could give. To put down her sword – because she would admit it now; she doesn't want the sword anymore, is tired of the sword, would gladly trade her sword for a bowl of hot broth and bread, for a bed, for the knowledge that she did not ever need to pick up a sword again.  _No more,_  she thought. The words on everyone's lips. The hope that roused them at dusk and brought them to their post to peer down and hope that  _no more_  would appear that night; dead, walking, ready to kill anything in the path.  
  
 ** _There they go,_**  
  
“There they go,  
No one ever sees, again.”  
  
Jaime's hand hovered away from his body. Lingered in the air as the words and mist did. His eyes consumed her face in the night; the summer sky that he dreamed of trapped in her irises, the food he longed for in his shrinking stomach in the color of her lank hair, the will to live in the words those lips once uttered; _are you so craven?_  
  
 **No.**  
  
Their hands clasped, as they stood there, tall and unyielding at their posts.  
  
 _ **There they go,**_  the words played upon the air,  _ **on a march of death, with mangled hearts, through the field...**_  
  
 _There they go,_  
  
“Filled with duty,  
Armed by blades,”  
  
 _Oh,_  the women called.  _O-oh._  
  
“Sing the song of death..  
Sing the song of death..”  
  
Their voices raised, sensing the end. In a dangerous and wavering collaboration, they whooped abruptly downward, as though dying themselves and the song had stolen their last worldly breath. “Sing the song of dea–!”  
  
And no more. The night continued on silent. Their hands squeezed all the tighter.


End file.
